Half the Battle Won
by skytyne
Summary: For the moment, Aaron Cross and Marta Shearing have managed to evade their pursuers, but they are still injured and direction-less.
1. Damages

Normal Disclaimers apply. I have no ownership of the film The Bourne Legacy, or the Bourne franchise.

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Marta's heart was still hammering in her chest when she and Aaron finally stopped skidding against the pavement. Before she even had the chance to sit up, to even think, her mind was immediately disrupted by the searing pain across the back of her legs. For a moment, she floundered against the pavement until the agony died down to simply a painful throb. She pushed herself up to lean over Aaron, asking if he was okay, hoping it more than anything. His response was weak, but he smiled, and his heavy breathing was tinged with the sound of relieved laughter.

They grasped for each other's hand, taking a moment to simply catch their breath. Aaron kept his eyes on her, but she could see his focus pulling in and out. His pant leg was now soaked through from where he had been shot. For the moment, she was the one leaning on his hand for support, but she knew in his state, it would be up to her to help him get treated.

It was a blessing when a boatman approached them, responding to the uproar of their vehicular crash. Marta could barely breathe out the words as she begged him for his help, not even sure how well he would understand what she was saying. She watched him as he surveyed the damaged motorcycle and the mess from the crash behind them. Marta couldn't even bare to turn and look. Part of her was afraid the man may still find a way to get back up and pursue them, the other part was afraid to face what she had done to save the life of Aaron and herself. One more time, Marta breathed out another "please," hoping the boatman understood. The man's response was a tentative nod of his head, and then a quick motion of his hand to wave her to his boat. He turned and spoke to his son in their own language, who responded by running towards the boat and unlatching the gate sealing off the stairs.

By some force of will, Marta was able to pull herself up to her knees, and moved Aaron's hand up across her back so that his arm rested across her shoulders. His palm gripped around the joint of her shoulder as he argued, "I'm fine, I've got it," and forced his feet to the pavement, lifting them both off the ground quickly. Unfortunately, neither of them were much in the state to stand, and Marta could barely find her footing before they started to topple over. The boatman rushed to their side and supported Aaron from his other arm. Aaron continued to mutter, but even he had begun to realize that he had reached his limit as the three of them staggered towards the boat.

The worst by far was the pain of moving up the stairs. As Marta gripped the railing with what strength she still had, her other hand dug into the back of Aaron's jacket, pulling him along with her, the boatman trailing behind pushing with his hands on each of their backs. She concentrated only on moving them forward, letting the boy in front of them lead them back down into a cluttered, yet vacant room with a cot set against the wall and a hammock swinging in the opposite corner.

With the boatman's help, Marta set Aaron down on the cot and straightened his legs out so that she could take a closer look at his condition. He was still feverish. For the past few hours, he had been running as though fully recovered from the virus, but he had pushed himself too hard and too soon after recovery. Marta's foremost worry was with the bullet wound. She yanked Aaron's back-pack from her back to assess what she had to work with. Cloth, gauze, adhesive, a scalpel, threading, and a needle. She dug further into the bag, hoping to find a pair of tweezers, but even turning the bag inside out ended with naught. Frantically, she attempted to explain to the boatman that she needed tweezers and boiling water with English words and only slightly coherent hand movements. As they tried in vain to communicate, Aaron pulled awake long enough to translate a few words into Tagalog that sent the man and his son upstairs in a rush to search.

As she waited, she looked once again at the wound. His skin was feverish, and the fabric of his jeans was imbedded in part of the wound. Taking the entire pant leg off would likely only cause more pain and potentially increased bloodloss. She would have to cut the fabric around it. She looked up at Aaron's face, he was heavy with sweat, leaning helplessly against the wall at the head of the cot. If only she had had a few more minutes to grab the medicine she had been purchasing before any of this had started. As it was, Aaron would be forced to deal with her probing without any painkillers.

As if he could read her mind, he muttered under heaving breathing, "I can take it, Doc. Do what you need to do."

Only a moment later, the child came thundering down the steps, a tea kettle in one hand and a pair of tweezers in the other. Quickly, Marta laid the cloth along the floor so that she could pour the boiling water across the tools to sanitize them without spilling water everywhere. She followed that up by pouring more of the water across Aaron's wound, biting down on her bottom lip as Aaron gave a hiss of pain.

She would have to turn off her mind and focus. Leaning down on the floor next to the cot was painful for her legs, but she steadied her arms on the wood paneling of the cot and pulled away the fabric around the wound with the scalpel. She imagined that she was in a lab, doing a routine procedure. She imagined that Aaron was properly sedated and healthy. She imagined that she had actually cleaned a bullet out of a wound before. Aaron didn't fight her as she probed into his skin, and it wasn't long until the bullet was out and she was dousing the wound again with water. The stitching proved to be just as painstaking as fishing the bullet out. Each time she had to re-insert the needle, she bit her own lip in sympathy. Eventually, she reached the end, cutting the thread with the scalpel still laying beside her. The rest would be up to Aaron's genetics. But she knew his abilities well enough that she was confident that he would recover from this.

With a deep sigh, exhaustion hit her with a rush, she leaned her forehead against the wood of the cot for support. Her hands, which had been steady throughout the operation were now shaking uncontrollably. She could hear a babble of conversation between the boatman and his son, but she didn't have the energy to turn around. The first sensation she recognized was the feeling of Aaron's hand stroking the side of her head, his fingers lacing through her now mangled hair. She turned her head just enough that she could see his expression. He gave her an exhausted smile and said, "Thanks. You did great, Doc."

It looked as though he wanted to say more, but couldn't put the words together, all that came out was "Marta.." and a part of a sentence that never started. His hand in her hair eventually stopped stroking as well. He had finally passed out, and he would need a lot of rest to recover.

Marta reached up to wrap her hand around his free one, gripping tightly. It wasn't until then that she felt the boat start to tug, and looked to see that neither the boatman or his son was still with them. They must have left to set sail. She wondered briefly where they were going, if they were actually safe. She was too tired to give a lot of thought to the future right now. The hammock was just behind her, but she knew even trying to lift herself onto it would be too painful. Instead, she stayed where she was, surrounded by her tools and the mess she had made, but still with Aaron's comforting hand in her hair, and fell asleep.


	2. Recovery

Normal Disclaimers apply. I have no ownership of the film The Bourne Legacy, or the Bourne franchise.

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Thank you for the lovely reviews everyone! I hope I can fulfill your expectations!

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Aaron woke to the sound of water echoing through the wood against his ear. His eyes sprang open. At first, he didn't recognize where he was. The soreness in his leg was the first thing to remind him. The room was dark, but his eyes adjusted quickly. As he scanned the area, the first thing his brain processed was the exit, the second was Marta sleeping on the floor underneath a hammock. She'd made herself a make-shift bed with a spare pillow and a blanket bunched under her back. His backpack was positioned under her knees so that her legs were angled off the floor. With her pant legs folded up to her thigh, he could see the bruising that had formed all along the back of her legs.

He took a moment to check out his own condition. He remembered, vaguely, Marta cleaning his bullet wound and stitching it up. Apparently, she'd patched him up elsewhere since then. His shirt had been taken off. Instead, now he had a bandage wrapped around his left shoulder, where another bullet had grazed his skin. When he stretched his back he could feel the stitching and the sting from the remnants of the burn left from sliding off the motorcycle. He didn't remember any of this getting treated, he had to have been out cold.

Without much difficulty, he got up from the cot and stepped towards Marta. With the thin line of light filtering through the door, he was able to read his old watch. It hadn't been damaged in the chase, luckily. The date across the top always came in handy. It'd been two days since they'd been chased out of Manila.

He kneeled down on his good leg just next to Marta and whispered, "Marta. Hey." Her only response was quiet breathing. Even when he put one hand on her shoulder, she didn't react. Well, the least he could do was get her off the floor. He had to lean down to the ground to lift her onto his shoulder while using his other hand to hold her feet up. Very gently, he pulled her off the floor, the blanket detaching from her as he stood. He kept his voice quiet, but he felt like talking, so he did.

"It doesn't exactly sit well with me, you lying on the floor while I'm knocked out on the bed. Sleeping on a hard floor can't do well for your good looks." He laughed to himself as he eased her down on the cot. The mattress had several blood stains from his wounds. Trying make the cot better for Marta to sleep on, he rubbed at the large stain where his leg had been, but it was stiffly dried to the fabric. He left it, and instead deftly leaned backwards to pick up Marta's pillow from the floor, and slid it underneath her legs like the back-pack had been.

It was when he was draping the blanket over her that he heard the footsteps of two people above them. The slow and heavy steps of the first he could tell was from an older man, years of hard work had worn his stance down. The other was faster, but still heavy. Another man. Aaron could hear him moving to several places around the deck of the ship, clanging metal and dragging a net across the floor. From what he could remember, the slower steps matched the man who had let them onto the boat. The second wasn't the boy they had met, he had to be another hired hand. He didn't want to wake Marta up yet, but he didn't like knowing so little about his surroundings either. He would have to do a sweep of his own.

First, he had to find his gun. At a glance, it was no where to be found in the room. His jacket holding their cash was missing, too. Marta must have hidden them. It only took a quick sweep of his eyes to realize that the fabric under the cot was uneven. He knelt down and reached under it, towards the wall, until he felt the familiar fabric of his jacket. It slid out easily. He pulled his weapon from the pocket without even unfolding the jacket. As far as hiding places went, it wasn't a perfect one, but he knew it was the only place Marta would be sure someone wouldn't find it unintentionally.

The way he was dressed, concealing his weapon would be impossible, but the cargo pants stuffed at the bottom of his back-pack would work. The jeans he was still wearing were stiff with blood, and the tear from his bullet wound had been cut almost all the way around his leg to make room for the bandages. The frayed fabric was caught in part of his bandage, at first he thought he would have to completely re-dress his wounds just to change clothes. As he got a closer look at the wound, he saw that his skin had already started to heal over, and the bandaging wasn't needed at all, anymore. One of the many pluses of being an ex-project of Outcome.

Once he had the cargo pair on, he grabbed his weapon and quietly made his way up the stairs, keeping to the shadows.

As he approached the head of the deck, where he could hear the men working, he kept his gun hidden behind the back of his leg. If everything was clear, he would slide it back into his right side pocket. The boat was old and well used, there were chains, nets, and fabric hanging over every jutting piece of the boat. Past the railing, he could see they were surrounded by open sea, and in the distance the sun was just beginning to rise. Under the dim light, he was able to make a complete run around the boat without coming out into the open.

Certain now that the only souls awake on the ship were in the wheelhouse, he approached it cautiously. Figuring it'd work best to be amicable, he knocked on the paneling of the wheelhouse and waited to see how they would respond. At first, the men were startled, and Aaron stiffened, prepared to move. Barely a moment later, the silence was broken with excited chatter as both men smiled at him, their hands open and clearly in view. In one smooth motion, Aaron slid his gun into his side pocket, and then brought it up towards the boatman for a handshake. It was a western gesture, but the man seemed to be expecting it.

And now for an exercise in translating. Tagalog hadn't been extensively covered in training. He only knew a few essential phrases. He did catch a string of thank you's as the boatman waved his arm, proudly showing the gold watch Aaron remembered grabbing from the factory director. The watch probably had a lot to do with his cheerful mood. He had all good things to say about Marta, too. She'd made a great impression on them, considering she couldn't speak a bit of their language.

The two men had work to do, but they insisted that he take a bowl of fried rice for breakfast and rest out on the stern of the ship. Aaron wanted to take a chance to think, so he thanked them and left them to their work. He would have a clear view of the entire boat from there. His intuition told him they were good men, but that wouldn't allow him to let his guard down. He passed by the stairway to the lower rooms on the way; he could still hear Marta sleeping soundly.

Dawn was beginning to filter the sky, but he could still see enough of the constellations to figure they had been sailing south. Probably in the direction of one of the lower islands. Assuming Marta was feeling well enough to be on the move, the two of them could jump off at the boat's next stop. Traveling from ship to ship would keep them well out of sight, but getting out of Manila wouldn't stop the search for them. The question was what to do about it. Bury themselves in a big city? Migrate to a different side of the globe? Or find a way to stop their pursuit for good? He didn't like the odds in the last one. If there was anything his plans were going to revolve around, it would be keeping Marta and himself alive.

He didn't dwell on it, but he knew things had changed. His training told him that they would be nearly impossible to find separated, and easier to track together, but he didn't care. In all his future plans, he and Marta stayed together. And despite of what his ingrained knowledge told him, he was sure that he would have a better chance with Marta with him.

By the time that Aaron had scrapped the last bit of rice from his bowl, the sun had fully risen. Off from the wheelhouse, Aaron could hear the boatman call out for the boy to come up on deck. Five minutes later, the kid dashed up, skipping stairs, and crawling in between the railings of the boat. When he noticed Aaron sitting casually across the boat, he stopped mid swing and stared, frozen in curiosity, until he was called again. Aaron sat and laughed once the boy ran out of sight. He was back a few minutes later with a tea kettle and cups, and set them down proudly on the table in front of Aaron.

He tried a little banter at the kid, which was hard with only a few phrases, but he seemed to get it. He was grinning and excited when Aaron sent him off to find a map. As he stormed his way around the boat and sped back with a map from the wheelhouse, Aaron could hear the creak of the cot from Marta downstairs, and eventually her soft steps up the stairs. As he waited, he laid the map out in front of him so he could sort out their location.

When she reached him, she didn't look surprised to see him. As she sat down next to him all they said to each other was, "hey," but she looked good. Relaxed. There was a spark in her eye that hadn't been there while they had been running. Her injuries weren't holding her down either, she moved like they were barely there at all.

She glanced down at the map, and smiled, "Are we lost?"

He studied the map again for a moment, "No. Just looking at our options."

Marta didn't look away from him, as she smiled conspiratorially, "Hm. I was kind of hoping we were lost."

It wasn't a bad idea. No mapping, no plans, just the two of them traveling to no where. He smiled back at her as he rolled the map up and pushed it out of the way. He was liking the idea more and more. He reached for her hand, and just let everything go for a while. Just him and Marta lost in the middle of the ocean.


	3. A Question

Normal Disclaimers apply. I have no ownership of the film The Bourne Legacy, or the Bourne franchise.

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The sun was just beginning to shine over the port of Davao when the ship docked outside a chaotic fishing market. From the starboard side, Marta could see the hundreds of stacked houses in the distance, the sunlight creating a glimmering streak across the metal rooftops. In many ways, Davao was similar to the city that they had left. However, Marta would now only associate Manila with the invisible eyes hunting for them. In comparison, the crisp morning sea air of Davao felt freeing. It would be a little nerve-wracking to return to land after four days of being virtually alone at sea, but Davao was a large, multicultural city, and Aaron was confident that they could safely stay lost in it for a few days.

Marta glanced over her shoulder to see where Aaron had disappeared to. He may have only managed to recover enough to get out of bed a few days ago, but now, he was moving around as though he had no injuries at all. The bruising on her own legs had lightened considerably, it only hurt if she accidentally knocked them against something. Because of that, she had mostly stayed out of the way of manual labor on the ship. She had made good friends with the young boy on board, whose name she knew now to be Ontog, cleaning and organizing tools with him while Aaron helped the two older men on the ship set up the fishing devices and pull up nets.

Currently, Aaron was no where to be found on deck. Across the boat, Marta could still see the young boat hand carrying supplies across the ship, followed along by the energetic steps of Ontog, two small crates balanced in his arms. She leaned onto the railing of the boat to try to get a look at the wheelhouse from where she was standing. She could just make out the steady hand of the boatman on the steering wheel from her vantage point. Just as she was considering moving forward to get a clearer look, she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder. Aaron had appeared behind her without a sound.

"Hey, I went ahead and got our stuff from downstairs." He handed Marta's thin jacket to her. He was already fully dressed. Under his black leather jacket, his damaged and stained grey shirt was well covered. Marta couldn't see any of the blood stain on his shoulder that she knew was there. Both of their clothes were well worn by now. Marta had done her best to wash the only clothing they had in a basin of water with soap, but it did little to clear away the blood stains. Her own shirt, which she had now worn for five days straight, was beginning to fray around the lining. Despite the fact that it was far too hot outside for their jackets to be comfortable, wearing them would at least keep their damaged clothes hidden.

As she shrugged her jacket on, Aaron looked out at the crowd past the docks. Marta could tell by the way that his eyes weaved from the boat to the crowd in the distance that he was mentally detailing their get-away. "Say your goodbyes while we're still on the boat, it'll draw less attention." He quickly glanced over to the other side of the ship where Ontog was working, "They'll be busy with their own work soon anyway. Once we're off the ship, we'll head straight into the crowd." His eyes darted to hers for a moment as his hand reached up to her shoulder with a comforting grip, before he moved past her to go talk to the boatman in the wheelhouse.

When Marta disrupted him, Ontog was in the middle of filling a wooden crate, under a pulley that would be used to level it down to the dock. She regretted not thinking to ask Aaron what the Tagalog word for goodbye was first. Luckily, she was able to get her meaning across with a simple wave and a smile. She leaned down so that she could give him a hug goodbye, "It was great to have met you, Ontog." He didn't have a good grasp on English, so she knew he wasn't likely to understand her, but it felt good just to say it. Ontog answered her with words she didn't understand. This was how most of their interactions had gone over the last few days, so neither felt uncomfortable with it.

Marta had grown accustomed to having few chances at conversation during her time on the ship. When Aaron had been asleep, she had tried her best to thank the boatman with the gold watch they still had, but aside from the few times she stepped upstairs to ask for food or water, she had spent the time the same way she had spent it in Manila. Guarding Aaron as he rested, with only her thoughts as company. Once Aaron had woken up, she no longer felt as though she was spinning in her own thoughts. She found that just sitting next to him calmed her nerves.

Unfortunately, they hadn't had the chance to talk much. Marta knew it wasn't a good idea to talk about what had happened to them while around the boat's crew, but there were so many questions still unanswered in her mind. Aaron's condition had always taken precedent when they were working out how to successfully break into the Manila lab. Even now, she hadn't been able to discuss any of her thoughts. When Marta thought back to Dr. Foite's break down, the fake psychologist that had tried to kill her, to the man who had chased them halfway across Manila with multiple bullet wounds, she had a difficult time wrapping everything together in her head. All she knew was that all those incidents were connected, that it had been the plan of whoever controlled Outcome and the lab, and that for the past four years, she had worked under an authority that was willing to kill more than a dozen loyal employees and agents just to keep its secrets safe.

After years of accepting the protocol and confidentiality associated with her work, she was now aching for answers. She wondered how much Aaron had a grasp of what had happened. Unlike her, he had always questioned his surroundings, he had prodded her for answers every time they had interacted during his time with the program. Back then, she had considered it a bit impertinent, he wasn't the only participant she had to field questions from, but he was the only one that seemed to expect answers that she couldn't give him. Now she understood that he had been the right one to suspect the elusiveness of the policy they were working under. Marta had simply accepted the morality of the program, and took for granted that all the program participants were volunteers, willing and accepting of their situation. She had turned a blind eye to everything for the sake of pursuing her own interests. She wanted to hear Aaron's side, to know a bit more about what she had been a part of. At the same time, she was also afraid to hear it, to face what she had ignored for so long.

When Aaron stepped out of wheelhouse and returned to where she was on the deck, the boatman followed closely behind. Marta's goodbye to him was just as simple as the one to Ontog. She hoped her gratitude came through clearly, even though it was spoken entirely in English. The boatman simply patted her on the shoulder, and nodded at her and Aaron as they moved down to the stairway leading to the dock. Going down these steps reminded Marta acutely of the struggle they had gone to go up them, and for a moment she was simply grateful that she and Aaron were alright. A step in front of her, Aaron turned to reach for her hand. He smiled up at her, but for a moment there was almost a questioning in his eyes. She thought he was about to say something, but he turned and led her off the boat instead.

The dock was a mass of noise, people were moving in every direction in front of them, carrying supplies, looking at stock. Marta was taking everything in when she felt Aaron bump his shoulder against hers. "Last chance if you want to go your own way."

From the sound of his tone, Marta assumed it was a joke. She gave a short laugh as she looked over to him, but was surprised to find that his eyes were trailing her own without a hint of humor. His hand was still wrapped around hers, but his feet were stiff in place, as the mass of people moved around them. Marta realized then that Aaron wanted her to make a choice. Either split into different directions among the crowd of people never to see each other again, or walk into it as partners. Aaron had one hand already on his backpack, ready to hand it to her. Marta wondered briefly if that was what he had been up to this morning, packing things so that she could easily leave with what she needed. In Marta's mind, they were already past this. Already partners. But Aaron wanted an answer, possibly he needed it in words. Either way, she could tell it was important to him, as she was processing this, his eyes hadn't left hers even for a brief second.

She gripped Aaron's hand tightly, "We're going together, Aaron. No separating. If I wasn't with you, I know I would already be dead."

Aaron's stance was immediately less tense, his eyes finally turned back to the crowd as he gave a quick huff of breath with a brusque smile. He began pulling her into the crowd as he said, "Yeah, me too."

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AN: Thanks again so much for the reviews, everyone. I'm glad you're enjoying this! The further the story moves into the unknown, the more challenging it gets, so comments and critiques are very welcome! Next chapter, we should finally get to see a lot more of Aaron and Marta interacting!

9/27/12: Minor Editing done.


	4. Acknowledgement

Normal Disclaimers apply. I have no ownership of the film The Bourne Legacy, or the Bourne franchise.

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"Look, if we're going to travel like this, we'll need to create some guidelines. Safety nets." Aaron was leaning against Marta's back so that he could talk quietly over her shoulder as she parsed her way through a rack of clothes, filled haphazardly with an assortment of shirts and pants. After taking a bus a few miles out from the docks, they were now picking up essentials at a cluttered outdoor stand in the middle of a busy shopping center. To an outside observer, it would simply look like an intimate interaction between a traveling couple. Marta did her best to keep her face casual as she looked for a few useful shirts.

When Marta turned to look at Aaron's expression, she was so close to him that her neck momentarily rested against his shoulder, "What kind of guidelines?"

As a group of people slid through the aisle between the stacks of clothes, Aaron put his arms up on the rack in front of Marta. He watched them for a moment before he started to relax. He leaned back, and briefly knocked the palms of his hands against the metal beam as he seemed to make a decision. "Go ahead and buy those," he pointed to the few articles of clothing she had found. "I'll meet you back here, just give me a minute." Without a moment of hesitation, he turned the other way, moving with the crowd over to a book stand adjacent to them.

Realizing that standing and watching Aaron would just call attention to herself, she folded the clothing over her arms and awkwardly ducked through racks to get to the elderly woman behind a small cash register. Marta dug into her pocket, and pulled out part of the money she had originally been planning to use for medicine in Manila. It took mostly finger motions to communicate the amount with the cashier, and even then Marta accidentally gave too much, but it seemed that the woman was accustomed to dealing with foreigners, she patiently sorted out the amount.

When Marta turned around, Aaron was already standing there, his eyes vigilant on the crowd. He was in the middle of unfolding a paper map as he motioned with a nod of his head for her to come closer. With one hand he pulled out a sharpie attached to the side of his back-pack, yanked the cap off with his teeth, and then clicked it onto the back end of the marker so that he could talk freely. "In case we get separated, or anything happens." He circled three different spots around the map, "These will be our potential meet up points. Go to whichever one is closest, and I'll find you there. If one of them is full of cops, or doesn't seem safe, jump to the next one. Just find a place where you can lay low, and I'll find you." He traced several roads across the map, each intersecting with one of the circled areas, "These are all major bus stops. I need you to memorize the routes and the stations. Then I'll trash it. Here." As Marta was studying the markings on the map, Aaron pulled out an unopened one and placed it in her free hand, wrapping his fingers over hers to emphasize its importance. "Always keep this one with you."

After a brief study of the markings, Marta turned away from the map and looked back at Aaron. When their eyes met, he asked, "You got it?"

The stations were each at the center of populated areas around the map, it would make it easier for her to find them again on a map that wasn't highlighted. "Yeah. I'll remember them." As Marta answered, he pulled the open map from her hands and crumpled it up into one large ball. He nudged Marta forward into the crowd, directing her to take a left turn around the corner of a convenience store. As they were moving, he used his free hand to pull out a single match from a box stuffed in one of the side pockets of his backpack, struck it against the concrete wall, and then lit the map as he threw it into a nearby trash can. While watching, Marta only had the brief thought that it was always a surprise how many steps ahead in planning Aaron was than he seemed to be. The box of matches hadn't been in the bag when she had hunted through it a few days ago, Marta wondered what else Aaron had packed from the ship for their use.

As they turned the corner, they were momentarily blind to what was ahead. Aaron put a protective hand on Marta's shoulder. She glanced over at him to see him scanning the periphery. Aaron kept his voice low, but continued talking, "We need to be prepared to leave at any time. If either of us gets a bad feeling, we should be ready to leave within half an hour." He glanced at her, so that their eyes met briefly, "I don't care if you feel like you're being followed, or if some old man just looked at you wrong. If you feel uncomfortable, tell me, and we're gone, no questions asked."

The look Aaron gave her had a subtle kindness in it, Marta couldn't help but smile back. Marta understood the unspoken message in what he was saying as well, and she accepted it without mentioning it. If Aaron felt uncomfortable where they were, Marta would leave with him without a second thought.

It had been a week of running since Aaron had saved her from being killed in her own home. Everything that had happened over the last few days, even that she was alive at all, was thanks to Aaron. In a way, although her life had been completely uprooted, she had found comfort in the fact that Aaron had been there the whole time as support. Marta had grown used to following Aaron's lead, she trusted his decisions. It was possible that she trusted him more than anyone she had in her life. Just as much as her own family. It was a strange thing to be struck with all of a sudden, while making their way down an unknown, foreign street.

If Aaron noticed the way she was staring at him, he didn't show it. Instead, he nodded towards a bus station up ahead, "We'll take the next one until we get to the other side of town. Then we can find somewhere to stay for the night. You still have that passport, right?"

Marta nodded, but patted her jacket's right pocket to feel for it anyway. The alias she would be using for the time being was Diana Walden, 34 years old from Georgetown, Delaware. If anyone were to ask, she and Aaron, or Kevin Jones per his own alias, were backpacking across the globe after becoming recently engaged. Marta had nodded through Aaron's explanation, even though the whole thing struck her as ironic. Traveling the globe together sounded like just the kind of thing Peter would have hoped for after their engagement, and the constraints he had felt because of her tie to work had been one of the largest factors in the ending of their relationship. Now, in payment for her dedication to her work, she would be traveling the globe for the rest of her life.

Marta tried not to dwell too much on forever, she still wasn't sure how to process it. Just thinking about it was like realizing you'd jumped down a hole without even knowing if there was a bottom at all.

"C'mon." Aaron's hand pressing against her shoulder disrupted her thoughts. Marta looked up to see a bus sliding into position in front of them. Without looking back, Aaron took Marta's hand and led her up the stairs, dropping coins in the meter next to the driver. He kept his demeanor casual, but Marta could tell he was using quick glances to read everyone on the bus. He found them a seat in the back, letting Marta sit first to take the spot next to the window.

Marta knew with the two of them still hiding in the Philippines, there was a need to be on their guard, but she couldn't help but wonder if it was difficult for Aaron to turn off this kind of conditioned thinking. She knew nothing about how participant training had been handled, she could barely imagine how these habits had been instilled in Aaron's mind. How much of it was for the sake of their safety? How much of it was the person he had become?

Aaron turned to give Marta a comforting smile a few times during the bus ride, but he barely spoke a word. Too many ears on the bus that could catch what they were saying, Marta guessed. When they finally reached the stop Aaron had been waiting for, it was just starting to hit dusk. Their shopping errands had taken much longer than Marta realized. Without a watch, she could only guess at the time.

The bus stop was at the end of a long road filled with restaurants and hotels, each one small, virtually packed in next to others around it. Despite so many places competing for customers, the area was fairly desolate. The street was clearly on the outskirts of the populated section of the city. Half of the restaurants were simply outside kiosks, with people stopping in quickly to take an order out. Unsurprising to Marta, Aaron gravitated towards the older, more run down establishments. The one he stopped at looked a lot more like a neglected house than a hotel.

"Wait here." Aaron said as he stepped inside cautiously.

Marta didn't question him, but as she stood outside the hotel, the food stall across the street grabbed her attention. She knew that with their safety as his top priority, Aaron probably hadn't focused on the fact that they would need food soon. In fact, even though they hadn't eaten anything since that morning, he would probably be perfectly fine without it. Determined to do something productive while she was waiting, she stepped up to the stall. Marta could tell she was beginning to get used to communicating with a language barrier, within only a few minutes, she had a meal of chicken and rice for both herself and Aaron. She managed to return to the outside of the hotel just as Aaron stepped back through the curtain door. She held up the acquired food, her eyebrows raised, waiting for his response.

By his amused expression, Marta was certain that he really hadn't thought about food at all. "Good idea," he said, simply. "We've got a room."

The hotel was even more narrow than it looked from the outside. There was a small twisting staircase leading to the second floor. As they entered the hallway they were staying in, there were only three rooms Marta could see. It wasn't until Aaron shut the door to the stairwell that she saw the fourth, their room, hidden in the corner behind the stairs. The room itself was equally cramped. It had two small beds, with only enough room between them to fit their legs. There was a bathroom on the left side, but it was partly blocked off by the nearest bed. The only space in the room at all was a two foot area in between the end of the beds and the doorway.

Aaron made the point of throwing his back-pack on the right-side bed. Marta didn't miss that it also happened to be the side that the door faced into. Marta guessed that it was the best vantage point in the room. Planning ahead, as usual.

Once Aaron had gone through the motions of securing the room, making a point of checking the bathroom and out the window, his demeanor immediately started to change. He took the bag of food out of Marta's hands, sat ungracefully down on the floor at the foot of the bed, and started unwrapping the containers for them. As Marta sat down across from him, it occurred to her that this was the first time they had been truly alone in days.

As he handed Marta her bowl, he stared at her with a very direct, curious gaze. "How are you doing with your legs?"

Marta had barely had reason to think about her healing bruises all day, she had kneeled to the floor without any pain to remind her, "I don't think it's an issue anymore." When she pulled up her pant leg to assess them, she was surprised just how faint the bruising had gotten. Pulling the fabric back down, she looked across at Aaron again, "What about you?" Marta had been studying Aaron's condition silently since he had begun recovering from his injuries. By all accounts, he seemed to be functioning fine, but he was also good at ignoring his own limitations.

Aaron rotated his shoulder, stretching out the tight muscles in his back, "Not exactly at 100 percent. Good though, back to normal." He looked up at Marta appreciatively.

Marta's stare in return was methodical. "You haven't been suffering from any unusual side effects? No trouble focusing, or headaches? After viraling off greens, it wasn't uncommon for participants to have symptoms.. muscles spasms, tissue build up.."

"I just assumed that was left over from the flu." There was mix of amusement and bitterness in his tone. "No, there hasn't been anything like that this time."

Marta was still a bit uneasy. She understood well why it had been the physical changes that Outcome had focused on setting permanently first. While she imagined the effects of the physical medication may have seemed more important on a basic level for Outcome's goals, there was also the fact that the effects of raising mitochondrial protein was much easier to anticipate and control than any enhancements to the brain would. The preparations for viraling off physical enhancements had taken years of studying the participant's reactions to the medication. Preparation for cerebral enhancement would have most likely taken more than twice as long. Without a lab or any means of running a blood test, Marta was blind to the effects the virus could permanently have on him without any studied tuning.

"You haven't even touched the food you went out of your way to get, Doc." Marta looked up in a daze, as Aaron interrupted her thoughts. He casually took another bite from his plate, but his eyes stayed trained on her. Marta was under the distinct impression that she was being studied. Her mind spun for a moment, as she tried to collect in her thoughts the hundreds of questions that had eaten at her all week.

"Aaron, what exactly was Outcome? What was it that they made you do? I don't understand, burning the program, why did all this happen?"

Aaron gave out a short laugh, "You know a lot more than I do, Marta. All I was told was the directive. If I strayed from the timeline, if I went off map, even if it was my only option, I got punished with pointless, bullshit training, and full spec examinations from, " there was a distinct pause in Aaron's sentence, "Outcome's labs." Marta didn't miss how Aaron had filtered himself. Every time Aaron returned to the lab off schedule, she had been the one to follow policy. From his perspective, it had probably felt like she had been the one punishing him.

"Sterisyn's protocol wasn't a form of punishment. Participants missing their scheduled time frame was almost a regular occurrence. We just needed to get as much information from you as we could when we had the chance. For us, Outcome was always about research. The study of viral mutation on the body. We-" she paused, "**I** didn't question how it was tested, or how it was going to be used. I just.."

"I get it, Marta, you were part of the system. I don't blame you for Outcome's choices, anymore." He reached over the rim of the bed to grab his back pack, and unzipped it to pull out two water bottles, tossing one in her direction. "After training, I never got to interact with anyone else in the program. The program contacts didn't like my attitude. I didn't like their choices much either. You were the most human person I regularly got to see. I looked forward to the routine at the lab. It was my only real chance at seeing behind the curtain, even when you refused to talk to me." He smirked at her, as though he was enjoying an inside joke.

Marta wasn't sure how to respond to that. Her treatment of the participants, it had always been professionalism. It had suited her line of work, and protocol had prohibited anything else. "I still don't understand what changed. Why was it necessary to have us killed?"

Aaron took a swig from his water bottle. "Jason Bourne. Treadstone. Have you heard of them?"

The names had a familiar ring to them. The news? She couldn't place them well. Aaron read her expression and continued, "Bourne's a CIA operative the media's gotten wind of. There's going to be a Senate hearing about the program, Treadstone. How much you want to bet Outcome's connected?"

"But.. killing everyone?"

"That's Outcome, for you. How many of the things we did do you think bordered on immoral? The things I did.." Aaron didn't continue, his words almost stuck in his throat, "Whoever made those decisions didn't want to have to account for that. That was more important than letting us live."

Marta let out an exhausted sigh, if she closed her eyes, she could still hear the screams of her co-workers, the blood all across the lab floor, Dr. Foite emptying his gun at her through the window.

Once again, Aaron disrupted her train of thought, "Marta, You met all of us, right? In the program? Nine, right?"

"Yes. All nine, until it was consolidated down to six. I was in charge of doing spec work on all the participants."

"Consolidated." Aaron's expression grew suspicious, "What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure.. NRAG changed the roster, and dropped three of the participants. I didn't ask anything at the time, I assumed the others had moved on from the program."

Aaron leaned forward from the wall, and looked at Marta with full attention, "NRAG?"

"The National Research Assay Group? All information about Outcome went through them."

"Were they in charge of Outcome?" Aaron asked pointedly.

"I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure. I was never given much information about them." Marta expected Aaron to push her on this point, but his mind seemed to be moving in another direction.

"There was one operative, the only other person in the program I ever got to meet. Dark, just under six feet, possibly Hispanic descent. Not much of a talker. Sound familiar?"

"That should be Outcome 3.. He hasn't- hadn't" The more she talked about it, the more she realized how difficult it was to talk about her work in the past tense, "He hadn't been given an examination for nearly a year. His blood work came in like clock-work, but NRAG told us that all other examinations with him had been temporarily postponed.."

"Yeah, he'd been isolated to an Alaskan training resort for breaking conduct. We were both still there when they decided to drop the gambit on us. I barely made it out, he wasn't so lucky."

Marta listened intently as Aaron gave a full account of his escape from Alaska. However, his story fed a lingering thought in the back of her mind. She had never considered the reasons that participants had been dropped, or why they couldn't show up for examinations. However, there was something about the way that the participants had been consolidated that unnerved her the more she focused on it. Each of them had been months late on their last check in when the order from NRAG came in. It wouldn't have been unimaginable for complications to happen in the field. Even with her vague understanding of their work, it seemed like the most reasonable explanation. But for it to be three all within the last six months. After three successful years?

Marta's stomach churned. There was a much easier explanation. The lab hadn't seen any of those operatives in eight months. There had been spotty shipments of blood work after that, a few folders of data sent from somewhere outside the lab. Was it a coincidence that they hadn't seen any of those participants after the decision to viral everyone out had been made?

Had she just accepted all these things? Now that she thought about it, there were several instances of shuffling from NRAG that, at the time, she and her co-workers had simply considered annoyances. Were those symptoms of a much more intricate problem? The lab had been under the impression that the move to viral out participants had been successful with only minor hindrances. Had the data been pushed under the rug, instead?

Marta didn't quite have the courage to discuss her thoughts with Aaron. Even more than her disillusioned feelings for Outcome, she had to face the shame of her own choices. Had her own professionalism, her acceptance of protocol for her own gains, had it allowed her to turn a blind eye to obvious questions that had been staring her in the face?

Aaron seemed to catch her mood, and eventually their conversation faded. For the moment, he didn't ask her about the focus of her thoughts. Instead, he finished off his food, keeping a watchful eye on her. Marta couldn't bring herself to eat much of her own meal. She mostly picked at it, as scenes from her entire career with Sterisyn replayed through her head.

Aaron kept himself busy, working with things out of his back-pack for a few hours. It was getting late into the night, when Aaron broke her meditation, announcing that he was 'going to hit the sack.' Marta followed suit, not because she had any hope of sleep, but because she knew it would do no more good to continue her train of thought sitting alone of the floor. Instead, with her eyes staring up at the dark ceiling, she couldn't help but berate herself on her choices. She could hear Aaron's words from after he had saved her, frustrated with how Outcome had treated him, she had tried to defend her association with the program. She hadn't been the one to determine policy, no "_you just loaded the gun."_

Marta wasn't sure how long she laid awake. It had been at least several hours when she heard movement from Aaron's side of the room. She had assumed all that time that he had been sleeping. Marta stared at him through the dark, but couldn't see much of his expression under the shadow.

"Scoot over," was all he said, as he lightly nudged her arm. She obliged, a little disoriented, her own thoughts and exhaustion had made her a little light-headed. He laid down next to her, and turned on his side, faced in the other direction. Without another word, he moved his arm to reach around his back, bringing her hand up to rest in his.

After that, all Marta was aware of was how quiet it was in the hotel room. The only thing she could hear was Aaron's breath, steady and low. The rhythm of his breathing against her arm calmed her thoughts. She felt warm. She couldn't remember the last time she had been this close to someone at night. Aaron may not have known what it was that she was wrestling with, but he understood that she needed his support. Her mind was still haunted with her thoughts of the lab, she couldn't let go of the shame of her actions just yet, but with the side of her head cushioned by the back of Aaron's neck, she knew that she wasn't alone in this. She understood that Aaron accepted it.

* * *

AN: Sorry for the wait on this one! It also happens to be considerably longer than my previous chapters. I hope it at least raises some questions!


	5. Next Step

Normal Disclaimers apply. I have no ownership of the film The Bourne Legacy, or the Bourne franchise.

* * *

Aaron only actually slept for a few hours. It hadn't been more than a few months into the program before he realized he didn't need more than that. The last few days had felt strange for him, he had spent a lot more time resting than moving. Now that he was mostly recovered, his usual sleep habits had returned.

Despite that, instead of just taking the three hours he actually needed, he had pulled himself to bed as early as 11 o'clock last night. Not for himself, but because he was hoping it would coerce Marta out of the numb meditation she'd been stuck in for the past four hours. His plan had only half worked. She had forced herself to bed, but not to sleep. As he rested in the dark, waiting for the hours to pass, he could still clearly hear her haggard breath, the occasional swallowing in her throat, her fingers gripping into the fabric of her blanket, the fluttering of her eyelids. All sounds of a person awake. He waited patiently for her to doze off, but instead, he only heard more tossing and turning from her side of the room as the hours passed.

Maybe it would have worked better just to ask her what she was struggling with from the beginning. It'd be a lie to say he wasn't frustrated, dying with curiosity, even, but he also knew when pushing someone to talk was probably going to backfire. Normally, he would have just pushed anyway, but he couldn't bring himself to do that to Martha now.

Aaron wasn't sure what exactly had set her off. For a while there, he'd gotten Marta to actually open up about the work she had done for Outcome, and he'd thought it was only right to tell her a little about his own. He'd been watching her when her eyes started to zone out as he described how he'd managed to hijack a bush plane 15 miles out from the Alaskan training resort. He'd trailed off a little in the middle of talking about the cross-country drive to find her, distracted when her unfocused eyes suddenly froze with realization, and her skin drained of color.

He'd seen that kind of look before. Something about their conversation had retroactively horrified her, something she hadn't noticed before. Did it have to do with her new knowledge of the participant training sites? The access to untraceable cars, IDs, and weapons that had been at various points around the country? The likelihood that a national defense project had been used inside the U.S. as well as foreign countries?

No, those were his worries about the program. She probably hadn't even gotten that far yet. If anything, chances were it was about her own work at the lab. The "dropped participants," if he was to harbor a guess. The whole thing sounded fishy to him. No way that was all there was to the story, or the only information that she knew.

While he had been with the program, he'd assumed that the doctors he saw regularly were in on the whole operation. They were surrounded by information, they knew each of the agents personally, while he was on the outskirts of everything, grasping for what little knowledge he could get. Originally, they were just another face of the program, another kind of contact. He knew now that it wasn't exactly like that. In some ways, being a doctor for Outcome wasn't much different from being an agent. Given objectives, following them through, not asking questions. Marta had been a lot better at sticking to her role than he had, but now things were different. Now she understood the consequences of following orders, and she had just as many questions as he did.

He couldn't let go of the part of him that wanted answers, that knew Marta was one key to understanding the bigger picture. At the same time, it would be better for both of them to put the past behind them. They needed to get a way from all of it, become new people. Any focus on the past would just create more ways for it to catch up to them.

Marta understood that. She had looked forward to getting lost, to losing their objectives. That didn't mean it wouldn't be difficult for both of them to let go.

Aaron could still clearly see the night sky through the screen of the window across from him, but he'd been resting long enough. He just wasn't that eager to get up. Marta's hair was cushioning the back of his neck, and her hand, previously held up by his, had moved to wrap around his stomach. Sleeping this close to someone was both unfamiliar, and strangely nostalgic. It was nice.

It was unlike him, how quickly he had gotten used to Marta's presence near him. At the same time, there had always been something about Marta, different from everyone else he had interacted with inside the program. She had the same closed off expression the others did, and her eyes were quick to break eye contact and focus on his data instead, but despite all of that, she had always had a soft touch. Everywhere else, Aaron was used to fighting, being beaten, scrambling for his life, being lectured by contacts, but when he sat in the doctor's lab, everything was quiet, and Marta was there, her hands gently holding him as the narcotics put him to sleep.

Aaron's memories as Kenneth Kitsom were foggy at best. When they had started him on the program, he hadn't been prepared for how vividly he would see things, remember things. Every moment since then he could recall in extreme detail, as though it had happened within the last few seconds, not years ago. The only downside was that it also made things impossible to forget. In comparison, any memories from his 26 years as Kenneth were a haze. He could remember a few places, some voices, important names, a shadow of feelings even, but only if he tried really hard. Normally, he didn't try. There was something about being with Marta that reminded him of what it had been like not to be an agent. Kenneth may not have had a good life, but he had his content moments. It hadn't been unlike this.

It was time to get up, he was focusing on this too much.

Aaron carefully detached Marta's hand from his chest, silently pulling himself away from the bed. It was only as he started to move that he realized how badly he was dying of thirst. The half a dozen water bottles he'd grabbed from a convenience store outside the harbor were being used to weigh down his backpack. He'd propped it up against the door, set to an alarm, in case anyone tried to sneak in through the entrance while he was asleep.

After carefully disengaging the alarm, he pulled out one of the bottles, and slid in between the beds to look out the window. As he downed the water, he took a moment to survey the street below. All of the shops on the street had been boarded up. Except for the occasional car light moving in the distance, or a lone drunk man wandering the street, the place was deserted. He glanced at his watch. Just after four in the morning.

As he sat down on the opposite bed, he started detailing his and Marta's next move. If possible, it would be best to get out of the country before the end of the day. With precise movements, he unfolded the map that he'd left on the bedside table. They had their ghost passports, and without knowing where to look, Outcome's reach wouldn't cover the transport inside all of the Philippine islands. They could manage taking the two hour train from Davao to the southern coast of General Santos. There would be a whole slew of boats heading down to Indonesia from the international port. It was as good a plan as any, but it still relied on them staying mostly out of sight.

His satisfaction at having a plan was instantly disrupted by a sudden noise from the outside street. He opened the window to hear the echoing noises of what was clearly becoming a brawl a few blocks down. The sound was too distant for anyone else on this side of the street to hear, but the last thing he and Marta needed right now was a commotion near where they were hiding.

With his ears trained on the distance, he started to sweep the room, packing their things so that they would be ready to leave. It would have been nice to allow Marta a slow start this morning, but from the way it sounded, there would be cops in the area in a matter of minutes. He hated to do it, but he had to wake her up, "Marta. C'mon, we got to go." He nudged at her shoulder gently with the palm of his hand as he kept an eye on the street. He could see more lights begin to stretch along the road, and the chilling sound of police alarms in the distance. Great.

Just as the cops had made their way close enough that the rest of the street could hear the siren, Marta's eyes snapped open, and she jolted up from the bed. Frantically, her eyes looked up at Aaron and then to the window, clearly confused by her surroundings. She put one hand on his arm to support herself, her sudden movement throwing her off balance, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." He said solidly, trying to be as clear as possible, "This isn't us. They aren't here for us. Some fists were thrown a few streets away, they're probably here to break it up."

Marta moved up to check out the window herself, even though Aaron knew she wouldn't be able to see anything from their vantage point. "What happened?"

"Don't know. Don't really care." He figured it was best to leave out that some of those blows had sounded near deadly. "But I don't want to be around if anyone starts asking questions. We need to move out before it gets too busy."

Marta rubbed a palm against her forehead. Aaron could tell that she hadn't completely caught up with what he was saying, but she nodded anyway, and reached for her jacket laying across the end of the bed. Taking a deep breath, she looked up at him resolutely, "Let's go."

A half a mile walk and a taxi ride later, Aaron let Marta out in front of the city train station. The dark sky had made it easy to hide in the shadows when they quietly made it out of the hotel, and Aaron had managed to find a path away from the street that was absent of people. Luckily, the commotion had only managed to draw attention away from them. Once they had been clear of the area, Aaron had felt comfortable enough to take a cab. He hadn't had time to explain to Marta his plans for the day, but she had followed his lead without question.

As he walked with her up the stairs to the station, he quietly told her about the port a few hours south of them. Above their heads was a lit panel with times and destinations. They would have just enough time to grab something to eat from a nearby store and catch the 6:30 train.

As if she had read his mind, Marta pulled a few bills out of her pocket, and said, "If you want to grab tickets, I'll pick up something from the bakery," she glanced behind them at a small shop at the corner of the shopping center across the street.

Aaron didn't try to hide the smile on his face as Marta confidently pulled in behind a group of people crossing the street, her eyes trained on her surroundings. He hadn't had time since she had woken up to focus on how she was feeling, but he could tell that she'd improved a lot from the night before.

He stepped up to the ticket counter, leaning one arm across the bar, and ordered their tickets as though he had done it a dozen times before. The man behind the counter didn't even blink, and passed the tickets to him without a question. Based on the small crowd at the station, it wasn't going to be a busy train. They could make their way to one of the back cars, where they would be out of the way, left to themselves.

Aaron had kept the bakery just at the edge of his periphery, so he saw immediately when Marta exited the store, a small plastic bag in hand. He nodded in her direction as he started to move towards division leading towards the train. As soon as she was within an arm's length, he put a hand on her back and led her to the train without another word.

The train was about as empty as Aaron had expected. He immediately veered towards seating just outside the cabin car. The noise of the tracks would be too loud around their corner for anyone around them to hear what they were saying. He motioned for Marta to sit in the seat facing the back, and then sat across from her so he could keep a good look at their surroundings.

"I wasn't sure what kind you would want, so I just grabbed a bunch of different types," Marta explained as she untied the bag in her lap.

Each of the buns looked similar to each other, except for the filling that showed through the folds of the dough. Aaron reached over, moving the top layer of meat filled buns out of the way to pick up one that was topped with a thin layer of icing. "Thanks." He leaned back in his chair and started pulling the bread apart.

He looked up at the unexpected sound of Marta's laughter. "What?"

"I don't know. Of all the choices, I hadn't really expected you to take the sweetest one." She shook her head and picked up one of the meat filled ones for herself.

"What? Agents aren't supposed to have taste buds?" He gave her a mocking look, but smirked anyway as he took another bite.

They were interrupted by a chime over the intercom, followed by a recorded voice insisting that all passengers find a seat. They both continued to eat their breakfast casually, as a few more people filled in at the front of the car. Aaron intentionally took the moment to pull two of the water bottles out of his bag, using it as an excuse to get a better look at everyone on the train. None of the new passengers seemed suspicious, but Aaron kept a careful eye on them as the train began moving.

The two of them sat in content silence as they continued to eat. It wasn't until he had finished the entirety of his water, that Aaron decided it was time to talk to Marta about the topic he'd been putting on hold.

"Are you ready to talk about it? Whatever happened yesterday?"

Marta's expression immediately darkened, but she glanced up to meet his eyes, a guilty look in her gaze. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to- I wanted to talk to you. I didn't mean to be secretive. We've both had enough of that..."

"It's fine." Aaron interrupted. "This is new for both of us. But what was it? The program?"

Marta crumpled the plastic wrap in her hands as she thought. She looked out the window in thoughtful silence before she finally spoke, "All of this time, since they burned the program.. I'd just thought that everything that had happened, the deaths, everything. It had been so sudden. That this wasn't the kind of organization I'd thought we worked for. But now.. I wonder if I was just ignoring the signs." With a deep sigh, Marta put a hand to her forehead, obscuring her face.

Aaron watched her intently, waiting for her to continue.

"You were right, about me. I let myself become a cog in a machine. I didn't think to question the consequences of my job, what we gave birth to through science. I just decided to trust it, because that was the easiest option. Accountability... has always been a difficult subject for us, scientists." Marta moved her hand to the side of her head, so that Aaron now had a clear look at her expression. Her eyes were trailing to the floor, as she sifted through a memory, "When I was getting my doctorate, I attended a mandatory seminar, where the accountability of scientific progress was discussed. If a scientific break-through could be made, are we obligated as a part of the human race to strive for it? Do we try to understand the effects it could have on the world first? Do we take in account every way it could be used? When does the realm of possibility instead become Pandora's box? At the time, I didn't appreciate the questions. I was naïve. I believed that any advancement would naturally be used to help the world."

Marta's eyes flickered up to look at him, as her hand reached out to touch his, "I still believe in the science that we accomplished. The possibility it had to change lives. No matter what has happened, I have to believe in that."

"Outcome, however," she continued, "The more I think about everything... I believe we were working with falsified data. At least some of it. Based on the information in front of us, we were working on a project with an impressive success rate. Repercussions on the human body were minimal. All of the data we received after viraling off participants showed that the procedure had been successful for every case. So, why is it only now that I realize how difficult it became to keep up with information over the past year? Those three participants who were supposedly dropped in the past few months, I hadn't seen any of them since the decision to viral everyone off."

"You think they were killed by the virus?" It was along the lines of what he had been suspecting.

"From the symptoms themselves? Possibly. It could also be that the permanent alterations had an unforeseen side effect. Without taking that data for myself, I can't be sure. I don't even have any proof that the data was falsified. At this point, it could be paranoia. There are just too many questions.."

"You've just spent the last week running for your life from your employers," Aaron reminded her. "I doubt it's paranoia. Withholding information is one of the simplest ways to create the upper hand. What would have happened if you'd seen those kind of results?"

"It would have completely changed our approach. Failure creates just as much valuable information to a scientist as a success. We knew there were risks in the changes we were making to participants, but our priority was always in doing what was best for them, physically. If the science truly was leading to death.. I don't know. I don't know what would have happened. That is something that usually shuts down a program."

For a moment, they were silent, hands now intertwined. Aaron wasn't sure what else there was to say. 'What ifs' about the program weren't going to be much help to them now. Things had happened, and there was no changing it. They were still alive, and that was what was important. Before Aaron had the chance to voice that thought, Marta leaned forward, earnestly looking into his eyes, "I'm sorry, Aaron. For my participation in the program. For being a hand in the system that used you. I didn't realize anything until it was too late."

Aaron shook his head, "For the record, the science you created. It saved my life." Marta was only a few inches away from him, he moved to push the hair that had fallen in front of her face out of the way. "We were both trapped in their system. We became a part of Outcome because we thought we would be doing good. If anyone should be guilty for all of this, it isn't us."

Marta sighed deeply, her serious expression slowly replaced by a small smile. Her shoulders loosened, like a weight had been taken off of them. Aaron was distinctly aware of all of her movements, the flicker in her eyelashes, the light reflecting in her eyes. He hadn't planned it, but in that moment, he decided he would kiss her.

Unfortunately, that was the exact time that the train passed a returning one. The pressure on the rails sent a loud shrill screech across the cabin. It hit Aaron unexpectedly, drowning out his hearing, painful enough that it momentarily disrupted his vision. He had to move a hand to his forehead to fight the sudden headache it produced. It wasn't a normal reaction for him, but when he looked up, Marta was rubbing her wrist against her eyes, shaking off pain like he was.

After the sound had stopped, Marta leaned back against her chair, and looked out at the cabin, like she'd forgotten where she was. Any pain from the noise didn't seem to be effecting her anymore. For Aaron, the pain was still pounding in his head, but he forced himself to ignore it. He couldn't remember the last time he had had a headache, and over something this simple. Feeling bitter for having lost the moment with Marta, and barely able to concentrate, he resolved to wait for it to go away. He pulled one of the last water bottles out of his backpack and hoped it would help the whole thing pass.

* * *

AN: New Chapter! And hopefully new things to think about?


	6. Communication

Normal Disclaimers apply. I have no ownership of the film The Bourne Legacy, or the Bourne franchise.

* * *

Under the canopy of a small cafe, tucked away in the city center of Surabaya, Indonesia, Marta sat guarded from the rain, sipping an iced coffee to stave off the warm, humid air around her. The muggy weather made her clothes stick against her skin, curled her hair into a knotted mess, but even so, the simple fact that she was sitting out in the open without being in a state of panic made all of those things inconsequential.

The trip from Davao to the southern end of Indonesia had taken several days, but Aaron and Marta had managed to make friends with an English speaking Indonesian family, about to head on their return trip home after making a shipment to a business in Davao. The entire family, a mostly grown group of five, took interest in their travels after being told their cover story, envious of the prospect of spending an entire year jumping from one place to the next without any restrictions.

Aaron hadn't been completely comfortable with the set up. Having a language in common certainly made the connection easier, but it also would make them more memorable, more likely to be spoken of to similar English speaking strangers, and most of all, the family would have more information to share if the wrong people heard wind of those stories.

So, they kept their story simple. Marta left most of the lying to Aaron, he had a way of giving just enough information that it felt like he had honestly answered the question, without revealing too much about themselves, or creating so many lies that they would end up contradicting themselves later.

In a whisper, Marta had thanked him for it later, as they rested in a set of old sleeping bags, closed off in one of the small rooms below deck. She was relieved that he was there for her to rely on. Alone, she was certain she would have only made the strangers around her grow suspicious. He had simply replied, "You're better at it than you think. You look honest. Even when you don't try, people naturally want to trust you." As he re-adjusted his pillow to better encompass the back of his head, he turned his eyes to look at her seriously, "They're more likely to trust me because you're here. But… it's probably safer for me to do most of the talking, for now. People like you, but they're also quick to remember you. It's a double-edged sword."

It was a difficult way to live, interacting with strangers, hoping that they would barely notice you. Just listening to the family swap stories, bursting into laughter as a group, was enough to make her homesick. She had always felt close to her own family, even as she and her siblings had grown older, spreading out to start their own lives. When her personal life was falling apart, she had always known her relationship with her family would still stay the same. Now, that was something she could no longer count on. The painful truth was that the loss of her family was just another consequence of her job, of the careless choices she had made.

The sun was just starting to peak out of the clouds in Surabaya's mid-morning sky. The rain was beginning to subside, but it did nothing to break the humidity radiating in the air. As Marta took another sip of her drink, the metal chair beside her screeched across the pavement as it was pulled away from the table. Carelessly, Aaron dropped a computer tablet down on the table in front of him, before he sank down into the chair.

"You should grab something to drink, it'll fight off the heat," Marta looked over at him as she tipped up her own drink, only to pause as she saw him. There was a look of agitation across his face, an expression she was starting to grow increasingly familiar with. "What's wrong?" she asked, even though she already knew she would get a dismissive answer.

Something had been bothering Aaron ever since they had left Davao, and no matter how she tried, she couldn't get him to open up about it. At first, she had thought it was nerves, or maybe a sense of their looming danger. He had quickly told her that nothing was wrong, and that he was confident in their safety as long as they kept their heads low. He had even found them a small rented apartment to stay in, with a small stove and refrigerator. He claimed that they could easily stay for a few weeks without raising too many flags. Compared to how they had been living for the past few weeks, it almost felt domestic.

Marta wasn't fooled. She was slowly learning to tell the signs, although, without Aaron's cooperation, she could barely tell what they meant. A dark expression would often pass through his eyes at completely random moments. It wasn't until several days of studying him that she noticed that those moods always existed in tandem with a spasm of the corrugator supercilii muscle just at the end of his right side eyebrow. That could mean anything from a headache, to stress, to the beginning signs of a stroke. Maybe she had simply found his personal lying tell.

She held back from talking to him about what she had noticed. It was still difficult to leave behind her way of thinking, to stop being a doctor. She wondered if maybe her mind was running itself crazy trying to read things into Aaron. He was the only case she had left to study.

"I'm fine." Aaron answered, the same way he always did. "There's something you should see." He pushed the tablet in front of her, and pressed the side button to turn on the screen. A New York newspaper article was displayed across the screen. **TREADSTONE SENATE HEARING INCONCLUSIVE. PAMELA LANDY UNDER QUESTION.**

"What is this?" Marta asked, as she glanced down through the article. Her eyes halted at a sentence in the middle, as she caught the name _Jason Bourne_. Immediately, she started focusing with closer detail.

"That senate hearing I told you about, the one featuring information about a secret CIA program? They had entire documents revealed about the missions, the operatives. A lot of it's been sealed again. Bourne's been declared dead. Looks like our old bosses get their way again..."

"I thought we weren't going to look into this anymore..." She said it weakly, just as much a reminder to herself, as she found herself feeling intrigued by the information in front of her.

Aaron gave a shake of his head as his shoulders shrugged unhelpfully, "It would have been good just to see them unravel. If just some truth shook through. Looks like we won't get to see it." He sighed and leaned against the back of the chair.

Marta reached over to the tablet and turned off the screen. Swiveling her chair towards Aaron, she reached for his hand and cupped it inside her own. "We survived. We escaped their grasp, so that's one win against them."

Aaron turned his eyes to meet hers, but instead of saying anything, he simply stared at her for a long moment. "What?" she said eventually with a self-conscious laugh, breaking the silence.

In response, he smiled, and then reached over to pat his free hand on top of hers, "Nothing. C'mon. If we want to get to the market before it closes, we have to go now." He wrapped his fingers around hers tightly, pulled her up, and led her back towards the main street.

Half an hour later, the two of them walked down the pathway back to their apartment with two baskets filled with an assortment of local produce. Marta had never dedicated a lot of time to cooking, but she was good at following instructions. With very little else to focus on, she was enjoying dedicating her time to things she had taken for granted before. Similarly, Aaron told her, he'd never had the desire or time to focus on it before, but he liked the sense of accomplishment he got from cooking. They'd been slowly trying to learn the best ways to savor the local foods. It allowed them to keep from showing up to the same business more than once, and learning to cook it themselves required considerable less of their secret stash of money.

As they moved to the side of the road to avoid an incoming bicycle, Marta wondered out loud, "What exactly is our plan? Forty thousand dollars is a lot of money, but it isn't going to sustain us forever if we keep traveling like this."

Aaron chuckled, "You mean, do we get jobs? I'll pick up some odd jobs if we need it. Who knows, we might run into some people in dire need of your stitching skills."

Marta knew what he was insinuating, "Aaron, I am not qualified to take injured patients!"

"There are a lot of people who aren't going to care, if you do it cheap enough. And don't ask questions." He looked at Marta's anxious expression and laughed again, "I'm just kidding, we really don't need that kind of attention."

Marta shook her head, "Then what will we do?"

"We don't have to plan it now. If we find an opportunity, we take it. Maybe there's a cheap business out there we can run. Something under the table..." Aaron's sentence trailed off as he looked on ahead.

Unusual for this area of the city, which was often packed with bicycles but rarely anything larger, there was a large gathering of cars moving along the street. Two of them had somehow cornered themselves in the middle of the road, and were trying to reverse to the opposite side of the street to create room to move around each other. Unfortunately, the steady stream of bicyclists was making it difficult. One driver was fighting the traffic by ramming his fist against the steering wheel horn continuously.

Marta turned from the sight, back to Aaron. The dark expression had returned to his face. Aaron, who typically used large crowds and commotions to keep himself concealed, had been actively avoiding them since they had arrived at Surabaya. The few times they had found themselves in the middle of one, Aaron was heavily distracted, taking longer to make decisions, and had fumbled against her while avoiding the crowd. She hadn't missed that the pulsing around his eye often correlated with these moments, and that loud noises were almost always the start of them.

Head pressure, sensitivity to noises, possible headaches, balance inconsistency. Marta collected symptoms in her mind. It was both Aaron's silence, and the symptoms' relationship to his cognitive health that scared her. She just wanted to know that she was wrong, that she was over-reacting, that these symptoms had no direct connection to his exposure to the virus.

"Aaron..." Her worry bled into her voice.

Aaron didn't look at her, and instead focused on the activity in the distance, past the automobiles. "Those flags hanging up downtown… There's got to be a festival going on..."

Their apartment was in a building packed against a dozen others on a long street just east of downtown, along the Mas River. The area was always busy, but Aaron could usually find a way to navigate by using some of the less popular streets. Their current view of the path to the apartment was blocked by a large business office. Aaron cut across the street to get a closer look at the two blocks to their east. From behind him, Marta could see that the city streets were especially packed.

"Aaron. Can we talk?"

Aaron was so distracted by his surveillance, turning his head constantly to observe their possible routes, that Marta was surprised when he actually responded, "Just a sec. Let's just find a good way back to the apartment first." He reached for her hand again, holding it with a firm grip, but didn't look back at her as he turned a corner past a newspaper stand.

As they walked through the small street behind the backend of a few multi-story businesses, Aaron stopped several times to block Marta from the oncoming traffic of people on foot and bikes. He remained as focused and vigilant as always, but Marta could tell that he was putting extra effort in. His shoulders were tight, and his grip on her hand would inconsistently weaken, and then grip so hard that her hand felt crushed. Whatever was going on with him had quite suddenly started to affect him in a worse way than it had at all previously. Forcing him to talk about it in the middle of the city streets wouldn't help either of them. She decided instead to follow Aaron's plan. They would make their way back to the apartment, and she would make him tell her everything that was happening to him. She knew where the closest pharmacy was, with a little more information, there had to be something she could do.

The street up ahead of them was considerably less congested. Marta knew after turning onto the street it wouldn't be far to the long concrete stairwell she and Aaron often used to get to the apartment building. Marta almost gave a sigh of relief as she saw the apartment out of the corner of her eye, walking past the threshold of the building blocking their view to the right.

It was a mistake. Marta had never been down this road when this section of the city was so active. The back side of several different buildings conjoined at the street end, closing in the sound from the nearby traffic and echoing it into the small street they were standing in now. Even without any irregular problems of her own, the sound of engines bouncing off the concrete made her ears hum painfully. The effect it had on Aaron was immediate. He ungracefully dropped the basket of produce he had been carrying, and instead steadied his head with his hand, gripping into the side of his forehead to fight the pain.

Marta stepped straight into his side to help support him with her shoulders. "You should have told me it was this bad!" Marta yelled in frustration. Her voice simply echoed across the walls, along with the several dozen other voices in the area. Aaron glanced at her through the space between his fingers, his eyes almost guilty.

Marta sacrificed her own basket, intently dropping it on the ground, leaving their produce spilled across the ground in a mess. The hassle wouldn't be worth it. Instead, she dedicated all of her attention to Aaron. She forced his arm over her shoulders, and propelling her feet towards the street. Aaron did his best to walk on his own, but his balance was off again, several times he simply managed to step across her foot instead. She did her best to ignore the pain. The manic energy of the street along with her own panic for Aaron's health made it difficult to concentrate on any one thing. She forced herself to only focus on returning home, maneuvering through the crowd with her eyes set on the street connecting to the apartment in the distance.

By the time they finally made it down the long set of stairs, Marta's arms were exhausted, and her legs were throbbing painfully from constantly knocking in to Aaron's. Luckily, the area in front of the apartment building was much calmer that the busy center streets. She was finally able to pull Aaron's shoulder away from her. It wasn't until then that she noticed how pale he looked. While they had been moving, he had been leaning against the side of her head. Now that her view was no longer blocked, she could see Aaron clearly, and most pointedly, the trail of blood along his outer ear.

"We need to get you lying down." She said as she dug the keys to their apartment out of her pant pocket. With one arm around Aaron's waist, she led him into the building and up the cramped, dirt covered stairwell up to their room on the 5th floor. Her heart was still hammering in her chest, as she tried not to think ahead. Could something have gone so wrong that Aaron was beyond her immediate help? What would happen if they were forced to call for an ambulance? How quickly would they be found by Outcome? Would they have the chance to run away again? Would they be killed on the spot?

Marta gritted her teeth, and forced her mind to instead focus on what was immediately important. She shut the door to the apartment behind her, and both turned the lock underneath the doorknob and slid the bolt at the top of the door. Behind her, Aaron sank down into the couch, exhausted.

When she approached him, he put up one arm to block her. "Look, I'm sorry, Marta. I didn't think it would get that bad, but I'm fine now. It always fades after a few minutes. When it's quiet. It's nothing I can't handle. I just have to fight it a little longer." Aaron said, his breath still weak, and his brow furrowed tightly.

"How do you know that?" Marta's voice rose in frustration, "You have no idea what is happening to you right now. Instead, you've just let it get worse, while I watch, with barely a clue at what is going on! Why would you refused to tell me about this? Did you think I couldn't help you?"

With force, she pushed past Aaron's raised arm, and reached to put both her hands on the side of his face. Taking the moment while she had it, she put pressure on his eyelids so that his eyes were forced completely open, and checked his eye movements. With one hand she turned on the light next to the couch, and watched his eyes react. The dilation of his retina's seemed normal, there wasn't anything in the blood vessels of his eyes that seemed to indicate dangerous brain damage. She moved her inspection to the muscles in his head.

"They're just headaches, Marta. I've dealt with pain before. If I give it time, it'll go away." Even though he was still arguing her, he had given up on fighting her inspection. He sat patiently as she looked over him, checking his face, ears, and the reaction in the muscles in his hands.

Eventually, Marta pulled back. Now that they were away from the stimulus, there didn't seem to be any permanent exterior damage. To really get at what was causing the problems she would need to read his blood work, run tests to see what the cognitive enhancement was doing to his brain. Her shoulders slumped. While they were on the run, she didn't have access to any of the things Aaron needed.

Disheartened, she responded to Aaron's dismissive reaction, "You can't count on that Aaron. Right now, we have no idea what the possible long term effects of the virus could be, or even how other instances may have gone wrong. You know as well as I do the questions I have about my work. And for you to- For you to try to cover this up…! I may not be much of a doctor right now, but I am at least your partner! I may not have a lab any more, I may not have a job, but the least I can do is help you!"

"I know-"Aaron interrupted her, "I know. I'm sorry, Marta." He put both of his hands on the sides of her arms. "But we still aren't safe enough for that. We can't go on a wild goose chase because what may or may not be wrong with me. We just need to see how this pans out, and lay low."

"No, Aaron! If something is wrong, then we find a way to take care of it. Your health is just as much a part of our safety as staying hidden." Aggressively, she pushed her hands against his shoulders, "Don't underestimate this problem! Just because you can't see the immediate effects, it doesn't mean there aren't any. Isn't this why we traveled to this part of the globe, anyway? I'm not going to sit by and watch while this happens."

She shook her head as Aaron tried to interrupt her, "You were the one! You just made it our goal just to escape, to live, and I believed in that! But for you to just ignore this, when all these warnings staring us in the face… then you aren't really fighting for it at all! Don't put me through that. If this is something we have to fight for, then we should do it!"

Her rant left her feeling weak, breathlessly, she finished the true meaning behind her words, "We are partners...I don't want to lose you to this."

This time Aaron didn't try to interrupt her with words. With a quick movement that momentarily left Marta disoriented, Aaron pulled her against him. Roughly, he kissed her, his arms wrapped around her back in a tight embrace. At first, she wasn't sure how to respond, she was so distracted by the touch of his lips that it clouded the feeling of pain in her arm trapped awkwardly in between their bodies, the pounding in her chest, and more importantly, the frustration still overwhelming in her heart. Her fear, the bitterness and hurt were still there, but in the moment she put it away and returned the kiss. Nothing had been solved yet, and her fears of the future still overwhelmed her, but for the moment she was comforted by the fact that Aaron was finally reaching out to her.

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AN: Thank you so much for the kind reviews I've gotten, as well as new followers on this story! I hope I can keep a decent pace for you all!

We're approaching the beginning of the actual plot! I hope you enjoy!


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